They will also be giving away (1) metal variant of Craig Drake’s “Predator”, inspired by the film of the same name. One will be awarded to opening night customers and one will be awarded to online customers.

All customers with purchases of $100 or more will automatically be entered to win.

Hero Complex Gallery is proud to announce their next exhibition Righteous Rides…And the Dudes Who Drive Them opening on May 3, 2013 and running until May 19th.

The art show will focus on prominent characters of fiction and their often creative ways of getting around! From skateboards to spaceships, anything that rolls, races, flies, or crashes can be counted in this high-throttled, tour de force that celebrates your favorite modes of transportation and the characters who drive them!

Millennium Falcon, Akira, Steve McQueen, Aliens APC, Ferris Bueller, Pussywagon, Prometheus, James Bond, The Nautilus, NASA…basically anything you can think of that takes place in and around your favorite modes of moving from once place to another.

The show will take place at the new permanent space for Hero Complex Gallery:

From skateboards to spaceships, anything that rolls, races, flies or crashes can be counted in this high-throttled, pop culture tour de force that celebrates your favorite modes of transportation and the characters who drive them!

Millennium Falcon, Akira, Steve McQueen, Aliens APC, Ferris Bueller, Pussywagon, Prometheus, James Bond, The Nautilus, NASA…basically anything you can think of that takes place in and around your favorite modes of moving from one place to another!

Since the beginning of time, there has been struggle. The epic clash of being against being. Rocky vs. Clubber Lang, Harry Potter vs. Voldemort and Joe vs. The Volcano.

Scott Campbell’s acclaimed Great Showdowns series, showing strangely good-natured confrontations between his favorite movie characters, finally gets a second book collection that fans have been demanding!

The 144 page hardcover book published by Titan will be chock full of Scott’s art from his Gallery1988 “Return of the Great Showdowns” show.

I love this print by Jerrod Maruyama titles So Happy Together; it just makes me smile ear to ear. The image is nostalgic, whimsical, adorable and joyful.

Maruyama contributed the piece for the Get a Room show that opened tonight at Bottleneck Gallery in Brooklyn, NY and will run through March 8th.

Online sales will begin on Saturday, February 16th. Followers of Bottleneck Gallery on Facebook can preview all of the art for the show in a special preview window offered just before the physical show opens. Please check their site for more details and information about ordering. There will be a very limited number of giclee prints available.

Now and Then, The Cabinet Card Paintings of Alex Gross, published by Ginko Press, is a compilation of 98 mixed media paintings on antique cabinet card photographs, done over the last four years.

In addition to a short introduction, the book also features 32 images of the original cards before they were painted on.

The book is filled with a series of mixed media paintings done directly upon antique Victorian cabinet cards. Cabinet cards are early photographs on heavy card stock, in this case dating from the 1880s through the early 1900s. Today it is not hard to find inexpensive cabinet cards. They can be purchased in antique stores, at flea markets and on ebay.

The artist uses a mixture of collage, acrylic and oil paints in making these pieces. Many of them were inspired by pop culture figures, like super heroes from the comics that he read as a child.

Alex Gross is currently based in Los Angeles, California. In 1990, he received a BFA with honors from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. Since then, he has had seven solo exhibitions at various galleries, and participated in dozens of group exhibitions across the globe.

In the summer of 2007, Alex’s first retrospective museum show was held at the Grand Central Art Center in Santa Ana, California. Alex is a recipient of the prestigious Artists Fellowship from the Japan Foundation, and several faculty grants from Art Center College of Design.

The theme revolves around art inspired by prominent characters of fiction, historical reference, or pop culture, and their relationship with their iconic “weapon,” that one thing that is inextricably tied to their character. Perhaps their weapon is provocative like seduction, or stealth, or sex, or power. Or perhaps its that one item that brought them fame or dishonor, like Hendrix’ guitar, Lenny Bruce’s microphone, or a samurai’s final honorable act of seppuku.

But it could and should live in traditional weapons from pop culture and fictional influences too. It could be Hellboy wielding his mighty Right Fist of Doom, Slim Pickens as Major Kong riding The Bomb to oblivion in Dr. Strangelove, or the ending scene of Romeo and Juliet with the fateful poisoned dagger. Perhaps it’s Indiana Jones cracking his bullwhip, Alabama Worley’s final act of desperation with the corkscrew in True Romance, Peter Vincent warding off vampires with his cross in Fright Night, or Mad Max tearing down the ripped up desert asphalt in the last of the V-8 Interceptors.

Whatever the weapon of choice, the gauntlet has been thrown down and the artists have seized the challenge with some amazingly clever concepts. We’ve already seen a few of the artist previews and they are proving to be a testament of how exhilarating the variations of this theme can be.